


vanish in the sun

by fishycorvid



Series: build me no shrines [2]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Dark, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending (or close enough), Hurt/Comfort, Not exactly happy, an epilogue to "build me no shrines", you should probably go read that first but it can stand alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 17:43:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14899082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishycorvid/pseuds/fishycorvid
Summary: It’s the steady beep that brings her back to herself. It’s the white-knuckled grip on her intact hand that keeps her there.(or, Jake and Amy try to get better)





	vanish in the sun

**Author's Note:**

> i got bullied and cajoled into writing a semi-happy ending to "build me no shrines". actually i agreed to the happy ending, and then wrote this in-betweener instead. enjoy!

It’s the steady beep that brings her back to herself. It’s the white-knuckled grip on her intact hand that keeps her there.

Jake can sense that she’s awake, now, even though her eyes have not yet opened, even though she hasn’t moved, really. The pause in her breathing, the twitch under her eyelids, and soft tensing of her fingers.

“Ames?” he breathes, and his heart is fluttering around his chest and he can’t hope, he can’t let himself, but he can still feel his heart quickening because she’s alive, she’s alive, she’s alive.

Amy hums softly, hoarse and exhausted, her throat dry. “Jake,” she manages to rasp out, eyes fluttering open. She looks so, so tired; pale and torn apart. They haven’t cleaned the blood off her face, just wiped some of it away with a damp tissue.

Jake can feel himself beaming as tears come to his eyes, but he can’t let them fall, not yet. He presses his lips to her knuckles and ducks his head against her hand and tries to listen to her far-away breathing, holds the pulse in her wrist against his fingertips.

“How do you feel?” he manages to choke out after a while, lifting his head just enough for her to see tear-shimmering caramel eyes.

She almost laughs, shaking her head a little. “Not too bad.”

_“Ames.”_

“Okay, I feel like I got shot and then my hand got crushed by a boot.” And maybe she’s trying to play it like a joke, but it’s just a little too desperate, and the words strangle themselves on their way out. She can feel her husband flinching and trying to hide it.

When Amy meets Jake’s eyes again, there’s a shadow in them that she’s never seen before, dark and angry and deeply, profoundly sad.

“You’re squeezing my hand too hard,” she tells him quietly, and he exhales, long and hard, and pulls back into himself, putting his hands over his face.

Instead of answering or even acknowledging it, he just says, “Thank God you’re okay,” and that’s the end of the discussion for then, because then the Nine-Nine is pouring in through the doors, and Holt can’t look her in the eyes, and Rosa looks like she’s going to throw up, and Charles is openly weeping, and Gina is afraid and pale and has her hands jammed into her pockets like she might punch something otherwise. The same look is echoed in Jake’s eyes. Gary skitters in a few minutes later, looking jumpy and scared, like any loud noise would be enough to send him running.

“I’m okay,” she says, over and over and over, even to Captain Holt, who finally gazes at her, but it’s almost worse than him not meeting her eyes, because there’s nothing but guilt and concern there.

“I’m sorry, Amy,” he murmurs, lightly touching her shoulder, and she shakes him off, looking away.

“I just need to rest,” she says, over and over and over, until finally Jake gets the hint and ushers everyone out of the room, and now they’re alone in a too-clean hospital room, the steady beeping and whirring of the machines seemingly more alive than she feels.

He stands by the door, looking painfully alone and so damn scared– for her, of her, she can’t tell anymore, but everyone is so, so scared.

“I love you,” Jake says, quietly, hesitantly, finally. It falls into a room that is too silent and too loud at the same time and hangs there in the air, waiting.

A nod from her, slow. Eyes flickering shut. She doesn’t ask him.

“I love you too.”

The discussion ends there.

Eventually, though, Amy does ask, because she has to. In bed with him at night, his hand curled carefully around her waist and her arms thrown over his chest and wrapped across his shoulders. It should be peaceful. And yet.

Muffled into his soft gray t-shirt: “Are you mad at me?” A pause. “For getting shot?”

It takes him a moment to react, but when he does, it’s with a jolt, heart in his throat. “Am I–” He pushes himself up onto an elbow, jostling her more harshly than intended. Amy lets out a quiet whimper of pain that she didn’t mean for him to hear, and he exhales against her hair, rubs her arm, and apologizes with a soft kiss to her forehead.

“Are you?” she whispers again, and she can’t breathe; it’s like being shot all over again.

Jake shakes his head and laughs in a way that isn’t funny, not at all. “Ames. God, I- of course I’m not mad at you for getting shot. I just…” He trails off, like maybe he’s not going to finish, and she touches her hand to his cheek, tilting her head so he'll look her in the eyes.

“Tell me,” Amy murmurs, and he looks away, and in the light of the moon and the streetlights and far off, barely visible stars glint off unshed tears in wide dark eyes. It’s poetic and devastating in a way that she feels down to her bones, and she knows she will hold this in her forever.

He drops his head again, away from the light, but he still isn’t looking at her. “I wish it had been me. Fuck, Ames, I wish it could’ve been anyone but you, but mostly I wish it was me.” There’s a silence in which no breath can survive, so they just sit, air trapped in and out of their lungs. “I wish it had been me.” That raw, scraped-apart laugh again.

She can feel tears slipping down her face against her will, and he’s making a sad, soft sound, reaching up to brush them off her face with a gun-calloused thumb. “I’m so glad it wasn’t,” Amy whispers, and Jake’s finger pauses, resting against her cheek.

At first, she thinks he might argue with her, might say another heartbreaking thing that she can’t reconcile with the bright, gentle man she’d married months ago, not all the way. Instead, he kisses her, light as air, so soft that she almost thinks she’s imagined it, except there’s a salty taste on her lips after he pulls away, this time from his tears, not hers.

In silent agreement, Jake lets himself relax back down into the bed again, and Amy follows him down, curling herself tighter around him, twining their fingers together. She lies her head just over his heartbeat, feels it beating louder and stronger than hers.

“We’re going to be okay, right?” she murmurs, eyes closed, and for half a second, she feels his fingers brush over the wound in her abdomen, covered by a bandage, just barely scabbed over.

She can feel him breathing. In and out. Solid. Certain. Real.

Eventually, his hand settles just over her heart and rests there. “Of course we will.” For the first time in maybe weeks, she breathes, too.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading guys! i hope you leave a kudos or comment if you enjoyed :) and my tumblr is the same as on here if you wanna scream about b99 or peraltiago or anything else. thanks again for reading!!


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